a little bit about a lot or, more likely, a lot about nothing

Post op

I don’t know how I feel about this. It all happened so fast. I wasn’t lying when I said I was comfortable with my ileostomy. After all the trouble and pain and doctor’s visits and treatments and medicine and and and…to be honest everything felt like it was getting back to normal. A new normal, sure, one that many people may not be able to understand, but normal. Going to work, maybe a bit too much, running my boys here there and everywhere. An adults only trip away this weekend. A trip to a friend’s wedding in the UK next weekend. On my own! Normal, fun, stuff. And then I got a call to say my reversal had been scheduled. If I refused the date they couldn’t say when the next would be. Be there in 3 days time. Thursday? Like THIS thursday? As in the day after the day after tomorrow thursday? Ok.

Shelve normal again.

Back to hospital and hospital gowns and hospital bracelets. Being poked and prodded and veins that don’t seem to open like they used to. Big blue veins that talk the talk but the needle goes in and then goes nowhere. So they have to try again and again making me cry in pain. Post op pain meds that took an age to work. Though it wasn’t an age because every hour I opened my eyes and saw only 5 minutes had passed. So many drugs I felt crossed eyed and the doctors laughed, not unkindly, as I told them how out of it I was even though it wasn’t touching the pain.

Kids farmed off to friends and family. The tiniest plaster that belies the abdominal pains clenching my gut. The mark of my flange that still hasn’t faded after 2,5 days. New little dots and jabs on my belly from injections and tubes.

The whole time thinking ‘but I am fine now. I am ok as I am.’ Feeling pulled along by everyone else’s revulsion of living with a stoma when MY living with a stoma was the most comfortable I had been around ‘bathroom issues’ for over a year.

Waiting to see if it will all work like it should. Wondering if everything wasn’t just fine as it was. Not knowing if this new normal will be good or bad.